Question

How do you detect that the user has changed the orientation of the display screen from portrait to landscape and vice versa?

The Android application must adjust to the new orientation. The system should be sending a change of orientation message to all open applications so that they can adjust. I could not find anything about this in the docs? Sorry if i copy these statement from somewhere else but i’m kinna new ina android/java, can someone guide me along?

Its just one of the Preference screen in multiple tabs i have, but i just want mere change of screen orientation when the phone position changes…

public class Tab2Activity extends PreferenceActivity {

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.tab2);
    }

}

Answer 1

Android will automatically recreate (destroy and then create) your activity when the orientation changes. If you want a special layout for landscape, you can create a special resource file in the layout-land folder, which will be loaded after the activity is recreated.

On the other hand, if you want to override the default behavior so that you can do something custom when the orientation changes, you can override the onConfigurationChanged method like so:

@Override
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
    super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);
    if(newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT){
        //do something if portrait...
    }
}